“Freehand striking” was used by early humans to make tools.
While studying how wild gorillas get their food, primatologists happened to observe a scene never seen before. A case of “freehand percussion”, a gesture which consists of striking two stones in the air against each other and which is very similar to that which our distant ancestors had to do to produce sharp splinters. This behavior, filmed in the Republic of Congo in western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), is reported in the review Scientific Report of July 15.
“On the video, which was analyzed second by second, we can clearly see five successive attempts at freehand strikes carried out by two young individuals, not on stones, but on very compact pieces of termite mounds (which can therefore be assimilated to stones)says Shelly Masi, primatologist at the National Museum of Natural History, first author of the study, who has been studying this species since 2000. It only happened in one of the two…
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